IANAL, but as far as I understand it, any given patent holder has exclusive rights to use its invention however it sees fit, including licensing the patent (e.g. patent trolls) or maintaining a monopoly.

Some patent pools (e.g. MPEG LA) are set up so anyone can license the patents covered under either FRAND or RAND requirements, e.g. fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory, but participation in patent pools is entirely voluntary. In the case of H264 everyone agreed to these terms to boost adoption and the ultimate value of their patents.

There is no requirement on what you must charge for a license. So, a $1,000,000 per handset "license" would be a perfectly valid offer, and obviously unlikely to be taken up by HTC.

The fee has to be "reasonable", and in fact courts will step in when the patent holder is being demonstrably unreasonable, even going so far as to put the patent in the public domain.

I'm not sure exactly how that translates into a dollar figure for license fees. But the patent holder certainly has an interest in at least appearing to work with potential licensees.

Still, "reasonable" can be widely interpreted, and take another many years to settle if the courts are involved.

Applying a basic sniff test, if all patents had to be licensed for reasonable fees to competitors, there would be almost no sense in having patents in the first place. Additionally terms like "blocking patents" in terms of intellectual property barriers to entry in a marketplace would also likely not need to exist.

IANAL, but I do believe from my own experience that Apple can effectively decide to not make their patents available to HTC if they so choose in this case.

I'd say the license fee is limited by the costs of an alternative solution, isn't it.

I don't believe you do have license your patented IP unless you choose to do so and I would be interested to see evidence to the contrary.

The language of the patent is such that all browsers post 1996 will violate it. So, my questions:

1. Can Netscape (1994) be quoted as prior art? 2. Can an anti-trust case be made against Apple/MSFT etc if Apple does not bring these claims against MSFT? Because, one can claim that there is no other reason except to punish Android if no claims are brought against any of the other violators.

I think you have posted this in the wrong place. It has nothing to do with the point of this thread.

I have looked into this further to confirm my belief. You don't have to license your patented IP. This is well treated in: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-does-5-buy-htc-...